Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Moron See, Moron Do

A few years ago, a bar named Café Marx cropped up in DC. Owing to the youth it was going after, advertising clearly wasn’t required. Now Babalu reports on a retread of the same idea in the impoverished proletarian ghetto of the West Village.

As for the place in DC fantasizing over a form of misery I had the pleasure to live through before most of these little shits were born, one bar reviewer reports that they seem to have unintentionally gotten one thing to seem rather accurate: no, not cultural uniformity, not the polar opposite of freedom of thought and speech, not control over ones’ life...

Apparently socialism encourages surly waitstaff and food that tastes like it just came out of the freezer. The good news is I've had drinks there half of dozen times and as bar Marx Cafe works very well. They have several beers on tap, including Chimay and Guinness (although they often run out)

Scarcity. Something these patrons who might imagine for a moment that Marxism has some virtues have never known thanks to Capitalism, where even the poorest in America were living better than the average Soviet citizen.

As for the booby hatch in New York, the Times of course gushed since their haughty selves who refused to seem moved by lowbrow celeb distraction seem also to be easily moved by lowbrow celeb distraction:

“In a perfect world, socialism means everyone is equal,” said the club’s owner, Armin Amiri, who spent five years buffing and rebuffing egos while manning the door at Bungalow 8.

He’s recruited the TV producer Ben Silverman, Harvey Weinstein and Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, to invest, and Giuseppe Cipriani to create the menu for Socialista’s ground-floor restaurant. And though Mr. Amiri admits that gaining entrance to the upstairs lounge is a long shot for most, he says that once you are inside, celebrity and money hold no special privilege. “If they come, fine, but there is no baby-sitting here,” he said.

Indeed, the hard knocks of elitism built on equality were on view on a recent Friday night. Loads of fancy-dressed hopefuls, arriving in chauffeured BMWs, S.U.V.’s and limousines, were turned away. “I have a bicycle,” Mr. Amiri said. “I don’t care what car you drive. It’s all about energy, attitude and personal style.”

To correct Mr. Amiri, it was about absolutely none of those things unless you call forced conformity and oppression “energy, attitude and personal style”.

Diversity and free thinking: school kids in the DDR who have a school period on “solidarity” with “Kampuchea” pitying the Cambodian childrens' pre-Pol-Pot days of labor.